Pretty much. It's a unit capable of independent operations. The Captain's Gig doesn't have mess, berthing or bathroom facilities, so it can be given tasking, but it needs support from the command it's attached to.
And, like, a recruiting office is not a command, but it's an outlier for a district office that is the command.
A warehouse won't be a command, but it might be one of several warehouses, and trucks and one office, that make up a particular shore command.
The office in front of our building, the program oversight for our Navy support operations, they're a command.
Well, even the captain's gig will be sent out with an officer 'in command' of the party on board, but that doesn't make it an independent command.
Same way that 'captain' is a rank AND a position. Sometimes THE Captain is also A captain, but not always. My first Captain was a commander until he made captain. I had to explain that to the Air Force Lieutenant who thought he was a Captain, but I knew that Captains had eagles because our Captain had made Captain.
You'd think we'd have made better use of the thesaurus when we established all this shit...
Blame the British. And the Romans.
The word 'captain' is derived from latin, where capo just means 'boss'. The mafia still use it this way.
The rank of 'Captain' in the Royal Navy is an abbreviation of "Post Captain" - a person with sufficient authority to command a ship of the line (fourth rate or better), and whose further career progression is determined by seniority on the "Captains List".
The role of 'captain' is that of the person (of any rank) who is in command of a specific ship. In an era when communications were impossible as soon as any vessel was out of visual range, that person was given absolute authority over his vessel and its crew; Literally the power of life or death over any subordinate - he could have any man hanged without reference to higher authority, as the only higher authority was God. This status was felt worthy of a clear and recognisable honorific, so that none were in doubt as to who was boss.
Of course, there were plenty of ships far smaller than a Fourth Rate ship of the line, so many ships' captains were of lesser rank than Post Captain. Even a midshipman could become captain of a captured prize, with orders to sail it back to a friendly port. So any officer could be the captain of a ship; But only a Post Captain could be appointed as the captain of a First, Second, Third or Fourth Rate.
Then the army came along, and used the same rank structure; But in the absence of any ships, and the presence of many egos, ranks suffered serious inflation. An army captain commanded a number of men roughly equal to the crew of a Sixth Rate ship, so he was considerably junior to even the most junior naval Post Captain. Indeed, this led to a problem - the Marines were soldiers assigned to duty on board ship, and their primary role was to put down mutiny, so they were treated as army, rather than navy, to reduce fraternisation with the sailors they might be called upon to fight. But the man in command of the marine force on a large ship might well hold the army rank of 'captain', and you can't have a junior officer on your ship going around being addressed as 'captain'. So to this day, Royal Marine captains are given a temporary promotion, when on board ship, to the rank of major. (I don't know whether this also applies to captains in the USMC when onboard naval vessels).
It's a major source of confusion amongst civilians.
